“Food is never anything but a collection of fragments, none of which appears privileged by an order of ingestion; to eat is not to respect a menu (an itinerary of dishes), but to select” (Empire of Signs, 22)[1].

By correlating food to fragments and ‘selection’ we see the intention of choosing food and intention correlates to meaning. Sexual encounters are also a series of fragments. One partakes in sexual experiences in the same way one indulges in culinary delights. He/she selects the object of one’s desire, there is a giver and a receiver and they are ‘served’ as a series of fragmented episodes, tied together through a common experience. Barthes states that food is an experience in touch. Sex is also an experience in touch.

Barthes (1983) provides an example of rice, stating that the substance is a fragment, both cohesive and detachable, what floats contrasts with what sinks, what’s dense vs. what is stuck together. He compares and contrasts food in France in contrast to food in Japan and the role of perception. For example, in France a clear soup is a poor soup, but in Japan, fluid as clear as water with only a few shreds floating gives the idea of density, nutritive without grease and a comforting elixir demonstrating that “food becomes no longer a prey to which one does violence (meat, flesh over which one does battle), but a substance harmoniously transferred.

Sex is also viewed differently in different cultures. Using The Sopranos as an example, it is stated that in Italian culture, the man shouldn’t be providing oral sex, as it is a sign of weakness. He can ‘receive’ oral sex, but he shouldn’t provide it. We hear this directly from Uncle Junior as a big beef between him and Tony is over Tony making fun of him for supposedly giving oral sex to his girlfriend. Tony and Uncle Junior are at war with each other and Tony quips:

“Cunnilingus and psychiatry brought us to this”

We see the same thing in regards to serving and receiving food, as women ‘serve’ and men ‘receive’. Additionally, the fragments of what is considered sex and intimacy is varied among food and sex. Just as in Japan, soup is a clear substance with only a few shreds of solid food, while in France, soup must be dense, we see in The Sopranos the difference between love and intimacy between Tony and Carmella.

Carmella has three “affairs” throughout the series, which differ wildly from Tony’s affairs. She has moments of intimacy with Father Phil, spending the night with him, cuddling and drinking wine. She has a massive crush on Furio and visits him daily under the pretense of decorating his home.

She has greater intimacy with both of these men, than the man she ultimately has sex with while her and Tony were separated. Tony, on the other hand, had sex with many women aside from his wife, yet he lacked ‘intimacy’ with any of them. These fragmented acts of sex throughout the series demonstrate the difference in meaning and significance, just as food.

Tony also treated sexual experiences as if he were selecting dinner off of a menu. Sex with his wife? Goomah? An affair with a realtor? Mercedes dealer? Oral sex? He treated partners and sexual acts as casually as ordering gabagool from Satriale’s. The entire menu was at his disposal and he felt free to indulge in either act to his liking.

“Within commodity culture, ethnicity becomes spice, seasoning that can liven up the dull dish that is mainstream white culture. Cultural taboos around sexuality and desire are transgressed and made explicit as the media bombards folks with a message of difference no longer based on the white supremacist assumption that “blondes have more fun.” The “real fun” is to be had by bringing to the surface all those “nasty” unconscious fantasies and longings about contact with the Other embedded in the secret (not so secret) deep structure of white supremacy” (181)[1].

In Western culture, ethnocentric statements are pervasive and often overlooked. This is especially pervasive in film. bell hooks wrote about a film Heart Condition, in which a white racist cop has a heart transplant, receiving a new heart from a black man. Transformed by his “black heart” he learns to transform his attitudes towards race. In this film, there was a dramatization of “eating the Other”. In ancient times, there were practices among primitive people to rip the heart out of someone else and eat it so they can embody that person’s spirit or characteristics. This film reinforces the mass culture perception that pleasure is to be found in ‘ownership’ of racial difference.

Hooks states, (1998), “it is not African American culture formed in resistance to contemporary situations that surfaces, but nostalgic evocation of a “glorious” past. And even though the focus is often on the ways that this past was “superior” to the present, this cultural narrative relies on stereotypes of the “primitive,” even as it eschews the term, to evoke a world where black people were in harmony with nature and with one another,” (188).

Inherently the problem is that even in mass media that attempts to ‘embrace’ all cultures, what they achieve instead is driving cultures further apart. These films inadvertently reinforce negative cultural connotations and oppression of the “other” through glorifying the past and positioning superiority as consuming the other.

[1]Hooks, Bell. “Eating the Other: Desire and Resistance.” Eating Culture, State University of New York Press, 1998, pp. 181–199.

When we see indulgence in “public life”, reactions vary depending upon several factors, including size, genderand attractiveness. It’s considered acceptable for a thin and beautiful woman to indulge in culinary delights. However, take the same behavior of indulgence and extend it to women who are overweight, and suddenly eating is shamed, looked upon as gluttonous, overly indulgent and gross. I will point to several examples comparing and contrasting indulgence in the public sphere.

Take, for example, the film Pretty Women (1990), in which Julia Roberts character chows down on a huge breakfast, noshing on huge pieces of bread and pancakes while sitting in a white robe, sexily showing off one leg.

In When Harry Met Sally, Meg Ryan, infamously demonstrates how easy it is for a woman to fake an orgasm as she eats her sandwich.

In both of these scenes, the leading women portray eating in delight, in public, but only to serve to enhance their erotic attraction to men. Because the bodies of these heroines portray the “ideal thin body”, it’s only ok for them to indulge in culinary delights. Particularly if the gustatory experience leads to heterosexual intercourse. However, if a female is overweight she isn’t allowed to “enjoy” eating. To do so is seen as overly indulgent, gluttonous and a loss of control.

Contrast the scenes I described above with Shallow Hal. If you haven’t seen this abhorrent movie, don’t bother, but I’ll give you the quick and dirty. Gwyneth Paltrow’s character (Rosemary) is obese but appears thin to her suitor (played by Jack Black). He will only date conventionally attractive women, but Tony Robbins hypnotizes him and makes him see ‘inner beauty’. This entire movie is centered on fat shaming. In the restaurant scene, Rosemary casts a downward glance, clearly feeling ashamed, as she orders a giant meal, including a “double pizza burger, large chili fry and chocolate milkshake”. Jack Black responds, “nicely done”, which apparently is the acceptable response if a thin, white, conventionally attractive woman is indulging. However, moments later, when she breaks the metal chair, for supposedly being too fat for it to hold, the fellow restauranters look on in horror and disgust. The director is attempting to convey that it’s not cute that the “fat Rosemary” indulges herself with food, just look at her, she’s an embarrassment. She can’t even sit in a normal chair without it snapping in two and she should feel ashamed for herself.

We also see the theme of only allowing thin women to indulge in the movie Fried Green Tomatoes. The film creates a dichotomy between “good eating” and “bad eating”, linking thinness with “good eating” and fatness with lack of control. The film follows Evelyn Couch, an overweight housewife with no self-esteem (of course, no overweight character is allowed to have self-esteem) and a husband who doesn’t pay attention to her. Evelyn is shown indulging in candy bars and other junk food, and it is portrayed as pitiful. Contrast that with how the film portrays Idgie and Ruth, both of whom are thin and attractive. They indulge in a variety of culinary delights and it’s seen as acceptable, even sexy. The scenes alternate between the stories of Idgie and Ruth, which are full of homemade pies, fresh berries and picnics and Evelyn’s pitiful life, which includes her devouring an entire box of Krispy Kreme donuts.

In a food fight scene, the cinematography and editing techniques set the stage by displaying a close up of the green tomatoes in a skillet, the film cuts to a bowl of red tomatoes, then plays the sound of tomatoes frying. The camera then cuts to fresh berries, eggs and chocolate icing, showing food in its simplicity. The scene then builds the sexual tension between Ruth and Idgie and becomes sexually charged in conjunction with food. In the food fight, the women then stroke each other with food and then fall to the floor. Honey plays a role in the film to serve as an expression for sexual tension, love and affection. There is one scene in which Ruth dips her fingers into the honey, displaying lesbian sexual undertones. We then see the pot of honey in the background in the next scene in which Idgie and Ruth share a kiss. In this case, the food contributes towards the sexual tension between the two women. This provides yet another example of it being acceptable for a thin woman to indulge, particularly if it will lead to sex, but an overweight woman is seen as overly indulgence and gluttonous. I also want to point out the linkage between sex, food and desire in all of these scenes.

Lindenfeld (2005) studied the film from a rhetorics of food perspective, she states:

“The film Fried Green Tomatoes(Avent, 1991) poses an interesting puzzle for me, as it is seemingly progressive in its treatment of race, gender, and sexuality,” (221). The film reaffirms hegemonic values and provides several examples of the relationship between gender, food and power (230).”

I had the same experience, in that this movie serves as an interesting portrayal of the relationship between women, food anddesire. However, I’m extremely disappointed that they chose to use the familiar trope of the depressed, overly indulgent overweight woman in Evelyn Couch. I personally would love to see a movie that portrayed a woman who was overweight, confident and her goal WASN’T to lose weight in the end.

From the standpoint of a concept that is more important than denying oneself food is anorexia and the promotion of anorexia through pro-ana and pro-mia rhetoric. Melissa Goldwaithe (2017) explores the relationship between women, food and rhetoric in Food, Feminisms, Rhetorics. Food, Feminisms, Rhetoricscontains essays written by a variety of feminist scholars with varying viewpoints. The topic of pro-ana and pro-mia rhetoric contributing to promoting anorexia is explored in “Evolving Ana” by Morgan Gresham. This article explores the pro-anorexia website, House of Thin, and how the rhetoric plays a role in the discourse of eating disorders. The common belief of ‘pro-ana’ and ‘pro-mia’ (meaning promoting and encouraging the eating disorders, anorexia and bulimia respectively) websites is that they contribute to the dangerous rhetoric for young girls and women on eating disorders. Gresham seeks to better understand the complexity the discourse on these sites. Pro-ana websites popped up at an alarming rate in the 1990s and early 2000s, with a variety of thinspiration quotes and images, advice on how to maintain and hide eating disorders and tips for losing weight. There are differing thoughts on these sites, asThe National Eating Disorders Association and the National Association of Anorexia fought to have these sites taken down, as they believed them to be damaging and hindering recovery for those suffering from an eating disorder. However, other researchers recognized the value in these sites, recognizing the value of women with this disorder to connect with one another and develop a coping strategy for their illness. The audience for these sites is primarily women recovering from anorexia. These women face an interesting challenge, as third-wave feminist writers claim that overcoming eating disorders is being a feminist, but Gresham explains that recovery isn’t a one-step, or one and done experience, thereby plunging women recovering from the illness into questioning their allegiance to feminism[1].

Snider (2001) states that pain can be involved with food and sex in regards to pleasure and pain. For example, eating hot peppers, spicy foods can be considered aphrodisiacs. The same dopamine-laden neurotransmitters in the brain are activated when risk behaviors related to both food and sex are desired. Anything the brain perceives as enjoyable will cause dopamine to flood our brain cells and build a memory ramp for pleasure. Food and sex are generally closely linked. They are physically in our brain, as well as emotionally. Good food is correlated with good sex.

“Some social theorists—Foucault, namely—argue that this tantalizing, ongoing search for culinary and carnal pleasure has much more in common than most pleasure-seeking eaters and sexual practitioners are even aware of themselves. These prime reasons consist of: purely pleasurable greed and bliss; masochistic endeavors; psychological confusion and/or substitution of the oral and phallic stages; desire for or purposeful loss of self-control; social status motives such as succumbing to trends or obtaining bragging rights; transcendence of gender and oft-established power roles with ‘foodie’ or sexual experimentation; among other reasons explored in the forthcoming sections” (135-136)[1].

The relationship between risk, potential pain and pleasure are interconnected. Sex has been substituted for food. The separation between pleasure and pain, ‘good’ and ‘bad’ aspects of sex and eating.

I would like to tie together the concepts of feminism, gender normative roles and The Sopranos. McCabe and Akass (2006) explore Carmela Soprano’s role as a Mafia housewife and her contributions to the feminist cause. McCabe and Akass mention, “she supports widowed girlfriends with baked goods and sympathy but only until her husband tells her to terminate the friendship.” (39)[1]. I question, “is Carmella a feminist?” In some ways, Carmella possesses a tremendous sense of agency. She holds the unique ability to control her unruly husband. While Carmella rejects feminism as “an elitist practice”, she is a paradox and is full of contradictions. At times she portrays the role of victim, at other times she is a domestic goddess and at others, a Mafia matriarch.

Carmella does, however, portray a gender normative role as a stay-at-home mother who places her role as a mother above all else. The most relevant example of this is in regards to her affair with AJ’s guidance counselor, Robert Wegler.

The only sexual affair that Carmella has in the series is with Wegler, whom she sleeps with to get A.J. special treatment at school. He calls her out on this and she acts surprised, but it is obvious that she is using her sexual prowess to ensure her son receives advantages at school. This isn’t the first time that uses her agency to get what she wants. In light of the college admissions scandal, it’s particularly interesting to hark back to the episode where Carmella strong-arms Joan O’Connell, a prestigious alumna of Georgetown University, to write Meadow a letter of recommendation to Georgetown University.

Carmela brings Joan a ricotta pie (of course using food to represent desire) and a folder of Meadow’s high school transcripts. Joan refuses to write the recommendation, but Carmela tells her she is not asking for it, she “wants” it. It is clear that she’s using her power and influence to ensure that her daughter gets into the right college. When Joan realizes that Carmella is the mob boss’s wife, she changes her mind and decides to write the letter of recommendation.

Another example of Carmella using her agency is in Season Four, episode one. Carmella presses Tony about their finances and a need to conduct estate planning. She approaches Tony while he is in a vulnerable state, eating ice cream on the coach after a long day and watching Rio Bravo (Howard Hawks, 1959). His mouth still full with the bowl balancing on his belly, she approaches him to ask what provisions he’s made for the future.

He rebukes her efforts to disclose information about their finances. However, throughout the thirteen-episode season, Carmella persists and continues to pressure Tony about their estate and the season ends with Tony and Carmella sitting down with a financial planner and an investment in a beach home. The long series narrative arc “imposes meticulous rules of self-examination” (Foucault, Will 19). The narrative mechanisms compel Carmella to bring forth representation. In the end, she wins and is successfully able to influence him to see a financial planner.

So, is Carmella a feminist? On one hand, she is able to successfully use her agency to get what she wants. While she publicly denies her alignment to feminism and holds gender normative roles, she certainly bucks against patriarchal society and does not submit to the dominate male presence on the series. While Tony may display the male bravado and appear to be in control, the reader can see that Carmella is the one person who knows how to ultimately get what she wants in her male dominated environment.

From the time I was young, food was love. We didn’t have a lot of money when I was growing up and there were times when my mother had $10 to buy groceries for a family of four to last a week, so everything was made from scratch and we didn’t eat out often. When I was four years old, Mom and I woke up at 4:00 a.m. every morning, drove over the state line to Kentucky Fried Chicken, and picked up my dad from work. We only had one car for most of my childhood and this proved difficult because dad worked in South Carolina and we lived in North Carolina. My dad worked third shift at a power plant over an hour away and he worked 80 hours a week. Mom didn’t want to be without a car for that many hours, so they cobbled together a plan with one of dad’s co-workers to get him to and from work. My dad’s co-worker would drive him to the state line, and Mom would pick him up there and drive him the rest of the way home.

This required us to wake up at 4:00 a.m. every morning, drive 45 minutes from Charlotte, North Carolina to a little over the state line in Fort Mill, South Carolina to Kentucky Fried Chicken and wait for my dad to be dropped off. We would walk in from the cold chill of the morning into the warm restaurant enrobed in reds and yellows and my mouth immediately began to water when I smelled freshly baked biscuits and fried chicken. The first time we made the visit, I asked for a biscuit, but my mom said we didn’t have any money. The next day I dug in the couch cushions, searching for spare change. I scrounged up a handful of dimes, quarters, nickels and pennies and put them in my strawberry shortcake change purse to bring with me the next day. The next morning, I walked right up to the counter and dumped out all of my change on the red Formica counter and ordered a biscuit.

“Do you want one too Mom” I asked.

“You only have enough for one,” the cashier responded.

Selfishly I ordered one just for myself without even thinking about my mom.

I unfolded the yellow wrapper, already marked with grease from where the biscuit sat, and took in a deep breath of the yeasty, buttery delight. I used a plastic knife to slice the biscuit in half vertically and I slathered a layer of strawberry jelly on the warm, flaky surface. I placed the top back on, making a jelly biscuit sandwich. I picked up the biscuit and opened wide, prepared to take a bite, but then looked at Mom and realized she didn’t have anything. I set the biscuit back down and took the top half off and offered it to Mom, “Do you want half my biscuit?” I asked.

“No thanks sweetie,” she said. “I’m not hungry.”

I shrugged, put my biscuit sandwich back together and took a bite of the buttery, salty and sweet delicacy. I can still taste the combination of sweet and salty melt on my tongue.

We repeated this ritual every morning, with me scrounging up enough change to buy a biscuit a day. I didn’t realize until years later the sacrifices Mom made to make sure I had food in my stomach every day.

The significance of signs has been recognized throughout the history of philosophy, since the times of Plato and Aristotle exploring the relationship between signs and the world. Semiotics is the study of signs and behavior relating to sign identification, including sign processes, such as allegory, metaphor and symbolism (Britannica, 1).

Barthes (1915–1980) was a French literary theorist and semiotician. In The Language of Fashion, (2006), he provided provides a history of semiotics. He states that the relationship between semiology and structuralism borrow heavily from Saussurianism[1]. The term semiotics derives from the Greek σημειωτικός sēmeiōtikos, which means“observant of signs”[2]. Ferdinand de Saussure(1857–1913), the “father” of modern linguistics, founded semiotics, which he called semiology. Saussure promoted signs as having both a signifier (the form of the word or phrase) and signified (mental concept). He believed that the sign was arbitrary and there wasn’t a connection between the sign and its meaning. His theory is quite different from previous philosophers, such as Plato and Aristotle, as they believed there should be a connection between the signifier and the object it signifies.

Barthes stated that semiology re-emerged as “semiotics” after the events of May 1968 in France (a volatile period marked by mass protests and strikes that forced France into the modern world) (Rubin, 2018)[5]and “Semiotics emerged out of post-structuralism” (125)[6].

Jacques Derrida (1930-2004), an Alergian-born French philosopher was best known for deconstruction, which is a form of semiotic analysis. Derrida criticized Saussurean semiotics, as he believed that the signifier and signified are not fixed, and he created the expression différance. Différance relates to the relationship between text and meaning, specifically the endless deferral of meaning, and to the absence of a ‘transcendent signified’. Derrida believes that “there is nothing outside the text”.

Peirce (1839-1914) is an American philosopher who is known as the “father of pragmatism”. He developed a semiotic theory in the 1860s that was based on the study of signs. He viewed semiotics as an account of signification, representation reference and meaning[3].

In Of Grammatology(1974), Derrida compares and contrasts both Saussure and Peirce’s thoughts on semiotics.

In his project of semiotics, Peirce seems to have been more attentive than Saussure to the irreducibility of this becoming-unmotivated. In his terminology, one must speak of a becoming unmotivated of the symbol, the notion of the symbol playing here a role analogous to that of the sign which Saussure opposes precisely to the symbol.

Peirce complies with two apparently incompatible exigencies. The mistake here would be to sacrifice one for the other. It must be recognized that the symbolic (in Peirce’s sense: of “the arbitrariness of the sign”) is rooted in the non-symbolic, in an anterior and related order of signification[4]. (46)

From a film theory perspective, in reading The Terministic ScreenBlakesley (2003) discusses several approaches to critically studying rhetoric in film, one of which is “film as language”. Film as Language treats film semiology as a series of signs. Semiotics is any object that can stand in for something else. Semiotics relates to food, as food can play a role in triggering meaning and thoughts in an audience. In semiotics, there are two parts, the signifier and the signified. Food is the signifier and the meaning that the audience receives is the signified, together they create a sign. Food plays a crucial role in forming identity and creating cultural code.